Here's my experience with Tony Robbins:
I went to the Unleash the Power Within seminar in London last year in may. It was definately a life changing experience - most of the goals and beliefs I focused on are still hardwired into my subconscious. I had been warned about the sales pitch beforehand so I was pretty sceptical when he reached that part, however I decided to stay since I wanted to hear about the Mastery University. At the time I found the sales pitch to be a bit pushy (although not as bad as I expected) but I did find the description of Mastery University to be quite compelling. I was determined not to sign up for anything, but I did decide to keep my mind open regarding signing up later. I also signed up for the "free coaching" and got an annoying sales call disguised as coaching - I just shrugged it off and used it as an opportunity to ask a lot of questions about the courses, but it did lower my esteem of the Robbins organisation.
This year in february he came to London again. Meanwhile I had been reading quite a bit on his online forums (
link) so I decided to apply to become a volunteer. I had several reasons for that, but the main ones was that I was training to become a life coach (a decision I made after the first UPW) and I wanted to take part in the process of changing the lives of the 10000 people attending the seminar. My application was approved and I had a great time helping out and getting more of an inside view of what goes on. The only part of it I felt reluctant about was assisting in the sales pitch and signing people up for the mastery program. Turned out that they only wanted volunteers who already had done the Mastery University to do the sign-ups and the rest of us was assigned to answer practical questions about the program - something I didn't have any problem doing. This also gave me a chance to talk to a LOT of people who had done Mastery University (and his leadership courses) to get at inside view of what the courses were like. The message I got from pretty much everyone was that the courses were amazing and that they had gotten a lot more than they had expected from it (this was from people volunteering, so they weren't paid by Robbins, although you could argue that people probably only volunteer if they really like the stuff he's doing). As volunteers we got offered a 5% discount if we wanted to sign up for Mastery University and I decided to take the offer (we weren't being pitched, although they did encourage us to talk to other volunteers about it if we were considering it).
For me the decision boiled down to seeing it as an investment in myself and my future. $10k is a lot of money but I considered it likely that the skills I learned would pay themselves back in 5 years or so. Furthermore this was something I really wanted to do and it was a time in my life where I needed to make a decision regarding my own financial situation - due to a change in the local building laws I could now mortage my apartment and I was considering taking a loan so I could quit my job and further my own development/coaching education while slowly building my own company. I knew that signing up for the courses was the first step, because taking the loan would be the only way for me to pay for it. This might sound a little backward, but at the time I knew I needed a little push to take the first step.
Since then I have been back to volunteer once more (and this time I felt completely at ease answering questions about the mastery university during the sales pitch) and I just completed the first course of Mastery University. This course was a big eye-opener in a lot of areas of my life and gave me a lot of resources and experiences that I know will be very valuable to me. An immediate result has been that I am experimenting with a much healthier diet (mostly raw/vegan) - the transition has been very smooth since I got started doing while taking the course and it has simply felt natural to keep at it since then.
I am looking forward to doing the Date With Destiny course in december. This is the course that everyone is mentioning as the cornerstone of his teaching (some have called it "UPW on steroids"). Ever since signing up I have used this course as my target deadline for exploring my options for designing my future business. I know that when I go there I'll be ready to lay down the exact plan about what to do for the next year or two and I trust that the process there will enable me to do so.
To sort of sum things up - I do agree that some of his sales methods need to be updated for the new millenium. Personally I find the pitch he does himself to be ok (although a bit on the hard side, its probably more tailored for the american market). But I think the methods of the "MUST Team" that does the sales calls are way too pushy. I also think that Joseph (the guy who did the health day seminar) was stepping over the lines several times during his talk. However from what I have seen of the company by now I think that they are running a very fair business and that the main motivation of most of the people working there is in helping as many people as possible. Of course they also run an effective business, but you just can't fake the level of passion I've experienced being radiated from most of his employees.
My advice to you would be keep a healthy grounded attitude and examine the pros and cons for yourself. Also maybe ask yourself if the objections you have is an authentically bad vibe about it or if it could simply be a part of your mind looking for an excuse for this to be "too good to be true".
I can see you live in Australia. I know there are several Robbins networking groups there that does regular meetings with invited speakers - if you're interested I can look up information about it (if you tell me your nearest big city). I'll also be happy to answer any other questions you (or others) might have about his courses.
Cheers,
Rasmus